Slashdot Mirror
Stardust to Return January 15
accessdeniednsp writes "Seven years ago, the Stardust probe was sent to intercept Comet Wild 2, gather dust particles, and return to Earth. Stardust is scheduled to touch down in a Utah desert on January 15. From the article: 'Our mission is called Stardust, in part because we believe some of the particles in the comet will, in fact, be older than the sun,' said Don Brownlee of the University of Washington, the principal investigator of the mission."
Other than the cool factor, the article doesn't touch on what good it will do us to study particles older than the sun. Anyone in the know care to elaborate?
It's the Andromeda Strain all over again! Who needs invaders from Mars when we go out and bring back little invaders of our own.
I know they are claiming to be prepared, but color me a little skeptical and concerned if there's a chance that the same engineers who forgot to convert meters to feet and lost a spacecraft had something to do with the safeguards on this probe.
The test monkey succumbing to the virus (or whatever it was) in about 20 seconds flat is one of the creepiest scenes in SF filmdom.
Remember when Area 51 was a huge scenario (New Mexico).. Now they are doing tests in Arizona to do whether climate simulations.. All of these dust tests and for what? Can we live on another planet!
Is it time to dust off the reruns of the "Andromeda Strain"? :-)
(see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066769/)